The present invention applies to the art of ordering of products and/or services at home from various vendors by means of telephone lines and, more specifically, to an automated ordering service conducted by means of telephone lines wherein no voice communication is required.
Telephone ordering services available today are the commonly known type wherein a customer can place a call to a remote vendor and order a given product by a product code. However, the call is received by the vendor through an operator and through voice communication the particulars of the product code, credit card identification, mailing address and the like are communicated. Such services are presently available for ordering of merchandise such as those normally found in department stores, and more recently, even in grocery stores.
The foregoing ordering systems include many drawbacks. One of the more obvious ones is that the particular vendors may have limited hours at which their operators are on standby to receive the orders. Additionally, at certain peak hours, the particular vendor may be tied up and the calling customer is unable to place an order. Additionally, there is the added expense on behalf of the vendor in the compensation necessarily paid to the operators who are taking the particular information.
With the advent of cable television and thus pay TV, there has been some variation in the process above-stated. In a pay TV system, the particular television station will have on file the particulars of a given subscriber, i.e. scope of the service desired, address and credit verification. In some of these pay TV systems, the telephone lines are used and a particular subscriber can call a specific number for the particular cable company involved and thus orally place an order with the company for the various programs that the subscriber desires to watch. Again, this system utilizing telephone lines encounters the typical problem of the subscriber calling on impulse shortly before the beginning of the program and thus most likely will encounter busy lines and thus be unable to watch the movie.
The assignee of the present patent application, Science Dynamics Corporation located at 1919 Springdale Road, Cherry Hill, N.J., has developed a system for pay TV which eliminates some of the problems encountered in the pay TV systems utilizing telephones as above-described. This system known as the Multi-Access Cable Billing System (MACBS) locates a system in the telephone company's central office. The cable TV company provides a listing of program and associated telephone numbers for the program either directly upon the TV screen or in a program listing. The customer makes a selection by calling one of the listed numbers using a push button or rotary dial telephone.
The call is routed to the MACBS through the telephone facilities via ANI sending type trunks. The MACBS stores the called and calling numbers and identifies the CATV company involved. The MACBS then transmits the selection and customer identification to the specified CATV company wherein the data is appropriately processed providing viewing of the selected program and ultimate customer billing. In this manner, the need for oral communication and operators at the cable TV company are eliminated along with its consequent delays.
While the above MACBS does eliminate the need for voice communication and delays, the limitations are that for each given program to be viewed, i.e. an item, there must be an independent number to which the particular TV company must subscribe. This is a rather expensive and restricted situation.